Trump's Immigration Policy May Actually Hurt Job Creation

Donald Trump has promised to create millions of new jobs in this country. But the policies he's pushing will not do that. His plan to create jobs by slashing taxes for corporations (and the rich) is nonsense, since taxes have nothing to do with job creation -- and corporations are already sitting on trillions of dollars without creating massive amounts of new jobs.

Now we learn that his immigration policy may actually reduce the number of jobs created in this country. Consider this article (a portion of which I post below) by Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal for The Gallup Organization:

As debates about immigration intensify, particularly in the U.S. and Western Europe, countries should consider that many entrepreneurial migrants are job creators. Given this, should societies be so quick to hang "keep out" signs?

A 2012 study based on Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the U.S. Census Bureau, found that migrants are more likely to start a business in any given month in the U.S. According to this study, in 2010, for every 100,000 immigrants, 620 started businesses each month. The rate for native-born adults, however, was much lower, at 280 new startups per 100,000.

The study also found that the existing business-ownership rate is higher for migrants than native-born adults in America: 10.5% of the migrant workforce own a business, compared with 9.3% of the native-born labor force.

A similar study in 2011 by Partnership for a New American Economy found that migrants or their children founded more than 40% of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. . . .

BP10 is a scientifically created, web-based assessment that measures an individual's business-building potential. The term "builder" encompasses various people who are engaged in the process of building something that creates economic energy where none existed before. The BP10 database includes talent data and diverse demographic information on business builders worldwide.

For the purpose of this study, anyone who is a first-generation (Were you born in the country in which you reside?), or a second-generation (Were either of your parents born in another country?), or a third-generation migrant (Were either of your grandparents born in another country?) is considered a "migrant." Those born in the country they currently reside in, whose parents and grandparents were also born in the same country, are considered "native born."

According to the Gallup's BP10 database, migrants have a definite edge in business ownership (34%) compared with native-born Americans (19%). These percentages refer to the ownership of existing businesses in Gallup's database.

Gallup analytics indicate that migrants are more entrepreneurial than the native born. Migrants are 1.6 times more likely to have "exceptional" builder talent, as measured by the BP10 assessment, compared with native-born citizens. The higher proportion of exceptional builder talent among migrants is not surprising considering that it takes a certain kind of individual to leave everything behind and move to a new country to start a new life.

This higher level of inherent builder talent among migrants then translates into a higher proportion of migrants starting businesses. Gallup found that migrants are twice as likely to be business owners as the native born. The recent global economic crisis may also be a contributing factor: Studies indicate that higher business rates among migrant populations might be influenced by necessity when jobs are scarce.

Gallup also found that migrant business-owners are two times as likely to plan to increase their employee base and twice as likely to have high growth aspirations compared with native-born business owners. . . .

Gallup data also show that migrants' business-building rates are the highest in the professional, scientific and technical services sector (21%), followed by the educational services sector (11%). This finding is similar to a 2012 Kauffman Foundation study, which found that nearly a quarter of engineering and technology companies started between 2006 and 2012 in America had at least one founder who was born outside the U.S. In Silicon Valley, the share was 43.9%.

Studies also indicate the share of companies that export goods and services is also higher for migrant-owned than for native-owned businesses (7.1% vs. 4.4%). In their 2012 paper, Robert W. Fairlie and Magnus Lofstrom suggest that the presence of existing networks in migrants' home countries that can be used to grow their businesses is one reason migrants export more goods and services.

Besides starting businesses at significantly higher rates, migrants are also awarded a higher number of patents compared with the native born. A 2007 Kauffman Foundation study found that migrants filed 26% of patent applications in 2006. Another study conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy in 2011 found that migrants were named in three out of four patents at America's top 10 patent-producing research universities.